Scaffolding of learning processes in vocational education

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Gerhard Minnameier
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning
• Term: from 2020 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 418438468

Adaptive support in the sense of scaffolding that responds to the specific needs of (individual) learners and provides just as much support as the student needs is considered as one of the key components of effective teaching. From the theoretic point of view, this is well founded. However, when it comes to analysing teaching and learning in process (and progress), empirical studies based on authentic teaching hardly get beyond the status of pilot or individual case studies. The reason for this is that there is a lack of tools for the reliable and valid measurement of scaffolding. The project aims to fill this gap.In particular, it aims at measuring macro- and micro-scaffolding based on lessons taught by professional and experienced teachers on a specific topic contained in almost all curricula on vocational education in the domain of business and economics. Macro-scaffolding concerns the structure and sequence of (fine-grained) learning goals. We intend to measure both the planned macro-scaffolding and the realised macro-scaffolding as it actually unfolds in the classroom. Micro-scaffolding relates the (kind of) support provided for the students to achieve a particular learning goal. In other words, macro-scaffolding yields a sequence of learning tasks, micro-scaffolding helps students cope with the those tasks.The study uses interaction-based coding as a new method to assess and evaluate the quality of micro-scaffolding and combines it with a method to analyse macro-scaffolding in terms of the completeness and coherence of the planned steps of teaching and learning. The latter is based on an inferential theory of learning.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Rico Hermkes